Is it okay to leave your phone plugged in?

TylerLucas

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From what I remembered, it won't have any real affect on the battery, but it may have negative effects on the micro usb port over a long period of time (over the duration of a year or two.) After a year and a half of doing this similarly but plugging it into my computer instead, I had to replace my port because it corroded and had a salty residue on it. Not sure if it is necessarily from keeping it plugged in though.

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erasat

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Everybody has a different opinion about that, but I can tell you by experience that with recent phones/Chargers, there is a non-issue. I mean, I only put my phone to charge when going to sleep, so I won't be waking up in the middle of the night just to see if it completed or not, I'm not losing my sleep over that, so I've always done the same, and I can tell you that I have never had any issues with a battery before, my GS2 battery has been running for 2 years like that and it's still working like a champion, the same for my wife's myTouch 4g, in August will be 2 years charging the same way, and just before I replaced it this past weekend with a new GS3 that I got on Sam's Club for a dollar including taxes, it could go a full day of my wife's mobile use and it still had more than 60% of juice left.
 

natehoy

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It's ok for a wall charger, but not a car charger.

It's OK for either.

When the battery is charged, the phone stops charging the battery. When the battery needs a charge and power is available, the phone charges the battery. It doesn't matter whether that power is coming from a car charger, a laptop, a wall charger, or a portable battery pack. The phone will charge the battery when the battery needs charge, and will cease the charge cycle when it is complete.

The only risk from car chargers or nasty cheap-o chargers is noise and/or voltage control. If your phone is expecting 5V and suddenly the voltage spikes or drops, this can damage the charge circuitry or the battery itself.
 

tx_tuff

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I could be wrong but I was told a car charger is "Simple" charger as in the type. A simple charger does not alter its output based on time or the charge on the battery. So a battery left on a simple charger to long will/could be weakened or destroyed due to over charging.

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NotJustAPhone

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Keep the discussion civil and on-topic. If you have nothing constructive to add to the discussion, don't post in the thread.

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taniabonita52

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I never had a problem with it. I charge it overnight, and as far as I know, the phone stops charging the battery once it reaches 100%.

Sent from my awesome Note 2!!!!!!!!! :D
 

Coffeeman

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I never had a problem with it. I charge it overnight, and as far as I know, the phone stops charging the battery once it reaches 100%.

Sent from my awesome Note 2!!!!!!!!! :D

True, the phone will stop charging when the battery is at 99-100%. You also want to avoid "bump charging", where you unplug the phone at full charge, then plug it back into the charger. Bump charging will cause the overcharging circuit to re-initiate, and will over charge the battery until the over charging circuit recognizes that the battery is fully charged...which only takes a few seconds, but nevertheless still attempts to continue to charge the fully charged battery.
 

HNNNNNGHHH

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True, the phone will stop charging when the battery is at 99-100%. You also want to avoid "bump charging", where you unplug the phone at full charge, then plug it back into the charger. Bump charging will cause the overcharging circuit to re-initiate, and will over charge the battery until the over charging circuit recognizes that the battery is fully charged...which only takes a few seconds, but nevertheless still attempts to continue to charge the fully charged battery.

Huh, mine sometimes jumps from 100% to 97% after unplugging it from the charger, but a hot reboot fixed it.

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rusty502

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Lithium batteries don't care, leave it charging, don't leave it, it will have no effect on battery life period, if you are using the correct charger. Try not to charge in temperature extremes, don't run them completely down, and make sure not to let them run flat when storing, end of story.
 

troshs

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Be careful plugging in your chargers in your car....too much charging while the car is off can kill the car battery. B.f. accidentally left his charger plugged in after taking the phone off and went into the house....next morning car wouldn't start.

From my S4 to you via Tapatalk 🍻
 

garublador

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I could be wrong but I was told a car charger is "Simple" charger as in the type. A simple charger does not alter its output based on time or the charge on the battery. So a battery left on a simple charger to long will/could be weakened or destroyed due to over charging.
They're all "simple" chargers. The actual battery charger is in the phone. The wall/car charger is just a 5V supply that the battery charger converts to 4.2V. That internal charger monitors the battery voltage and the temperature and decides how much current to supply to the battery.
 

sraatc17

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Be careful plugging in your chargers in your car....too much charging while the car is off can kill the car battery. B.f. accidentally left his charger plugged in after taking the phone off and went into the house....next morning car wouldn't start.

From my S4 to you via Tapatalk 🍻

This depends on your car or truck. My buddy's Silverado does this (the outlet stays live with the ignition off). My Jetta on the other hand does not. When I turn my ignition off the outlet gets no power, therefore I leave my charger plugged in and the battery isn't drained at all. Test it out plug your phone in with the engine running. Then when it's charging turn it off and then take the key out and open the door. If the phone stops charging your safe to leave the charger plugged in when your not using it.

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anon(3882976)

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Be careful plugging in your chargers in your car....too much charging while the car is off can kill the car battery. B.f. accidentally left his charger plugged in after taking the phone off and went into the house....next morning car wouldn't start.

From my S4 to you via Tapatalk ��

If that ran his car battery down, he needs a new car battery or a new charger. My wife never unplugs her charger and her car has been parked for 3 or 4 straight days many times without the charger running it down. Her outlet stays live at all times.
 

troshs

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He does need a new battery. However it's just like accidentally leaving your dome light on at night.

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Cowboy8467

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You can leave it charging and it really won't matter. Of course the great thing about this phone is that even if something does go wrong with the battery you can buy a new one online for like $10 and pop it right in!

Certainly one of the benefits of having a phone with a removable back cover.
 

garublador

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He does need a new battery. However it's just like accidentally leaving your dome light on at night.
It shouldn't be. What are dome lights, like 10 W? That means that a 5 V source, like a phone charger would have to be putting out a constant 2 A to drain the battery as much as a dome light. That would only be true if the charger were charging a phone the whole time (i.e. the phone battery never got fully charged). If a phone isn't plugged in the only power it should be using is to maybe keep some circuitry alive (micro to milliamps) and maybe an LED (usually max out at 20 mA). So it should only use a hundredth of what a dome light was at the absolute maximum. So if it takes 5 hours for the dome light to drain your battery then it would take 500 hours (almost 3 weeks) for the charger to drain the battery. If it only takes 2 hours for the dome light it would be about a week for the charger it takes 10 minutes for the dome light to drain your battery it would still take the charger 16 hours. At that point you'd probably have a hard time starting your car no matter what.
 

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